Australians
have long had an obsession with ‘big’ monuments to small innocuous items – the
Big Banana (Coffs Harbour, NSW), the Big Pineapple (Sunshine Coast, Qld), the Big
Merino (Goulburn, NSW) and the Giant Koala (Dadswells Bridge, Vic) are but a
few of a remarkably long list. Whilst many of us might consider this fascination,
bordering on obsession, with ‘Big’ things to be very Australian, recent travels
in China have revealed that we are not
alone!
Of
course, it is well known that China is a country comprising many genuinely big
things – it has the biggest population, the biggest wall (the Great Wall), one
of the longest rivers (the Yangtze), part of the tallest mountain (Mt Everest
known as Mount Quomolangma in China) and many more. However, few foreigners
know about China’s own ‘big’ monuments to the small and innocuous. So it was
somewhat of a revelation when I discovered the ‘Big’ Rice Cooker on a road in
the outskirts of the city of Zhanjiang, Guangdong. Though initially dumbfounded
by this discovery, I quickly came to see the logic – Zhanjiang is a major
manufacturing centre for electric rice cookers of all descriptions. In fact,
more than 50% of all rice cookers in the world are manufactured here.
No comments:
Post a Comment